What Our Pledges Pay For, From A – Z

Stewardship season is upon us! We live by faith but money helps too! So Nancy Stork, Clerk of the Vestry, has offered her poetical list of what all our pledges of support to St. Bede’s pay for:

All Saints, Alleluias, Acolytes and Anthems,
Benedictions, Baptisms, Bread and Bells, Banners and Bulletins,
Crucifers, Christmas, Cooks and the Choir,
Chapel for Children,
Deacons and Drama and Deanery Delegates,
Ecumenical Exegesis in Excelsis at Easter,
Fellowship, Feasts and Fun and Flowers,
a Great Hall and the Grandeur of Gonfalons, Gospels and Glorias,
Homilies, Hope, Hosannas, Heating and Healing,
Incense and Infants and Incarnation,
Jubilation to Jesus,
Kyrie Eleisons to the King of Kings,
Liturgy, Love and Lauds to the Lord of Hosts and Lamb of God,
Music, Marriage, Mercy and Meditation,
a Narthex, a Nursery and a Newsletter,
Orations and Organists, Prayer books,
our Rector, and Redemption,
Soulwork, Seminarians, Sunday School and Sacraments,
Taize and Tongues of Tripartite flame,
Thuribles and Thurifers,
Water and Wine and Wisdom and Wit,
the Excellence of our Lord Jesus X (Greek for Christos!)
whose Yoke is easy and whose Youth Group is alright,
and your Zeal that makes it all happen.

God’s Sausage: Finding Hope Admidst the Failures of Our Governing Institutions

Robert Muller, who served recently as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, came from Alsace-Lorraine. His family and friends still living there have experienced five national changes since the end of the second world war. As a young soldier, he lost all of his comrades in battle and was grateful to survive. So he dedicated the rest of his life to peacemaking and went to work for the UN, working there for fifty years. When he began, he was pessimistic about the possibility of peace, given his wartime experience. But he said that five decades of working at the UN had transformed his point of view. He now identifies himself as a seventy-five year old optimist. He points to the miracle of the European Union, that has emerged barely three generations after the wreckage of Europe he left…

When I consider the example of Robert Muller, I’m reminded that many of us have wondered whether the UN would ever live up to its founding vision. Like making sausage and legislation in congress, or in diocesan convention on Saturday, it’s better not to observe the process closely. Suffice it to say that the UN is an arena of contention. Yet what nations may have meant for their self-interest, God can also use for good, the EU being the case in point. And now, the various and relatively new multinational institutions are being challenged, not only to live up to their founding visions, but to transcend them, in the service of a greater good, a greater whole.

(Click below for the whole sermon.)

Another Sacred Space

Few see what goes on in our Nursery/Pre-Sunday School during the 10:15 am Sunday service. But it is something to behold. Especially since we moved into the rest of Wyatt Hall, our babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers (ages birth to 4) now have all the space they need to romp about. And they are forging a wonderful little community.

Many thanks to our stalwart crew of volunteer Nursery/Pre-Sunday School caregivers. The team is eight strong now and they do a wonderful job of maintaining control over the chaos.